[snip]
1. Visual design/UI convention:
I think the navigation tabs extending downwards are a design error. The
visual language here suggests that the material in pink is being
labelled, when in fact it is the material in white. I think that this is
an abuse of a UI convention, and that it would probably be better to put
the tabs the right way out. (extending upwards from the related content
into the header area)
[/snip]
:) I like them hanging down and will probably do something (using the
sliding door CSS) to pretty them up. I do think that it shakes up things
a bit. If this is an 'abuse' of UI convention, so be it. And not to
start a holy war, but which UI convention? Is there really a UI
convention? As a software guy with over 20 years under his belt I have
read the Zeldman's (and others et. al.) of the world...and they can't
even agree on convention. The propagation of Ajax will only serve to
extend the abuses. :)
[snip]
2. I think you should link the thumbnails of the products in the phones
page to the enlarged view as well as the text "enlarge".
[/snip]
Will do and I have plans to expand upon this. Lightbox makes this a neat
solution to the product display question.
{snip]
3. I think it is evil to put a link called "Product Detail" to a 1.8Mb
PDF file without warning (the KX440 Phantom). Supply product details as
HTML in addition to the PDF? Put the information about the binary file
format and download size into the link?
e.g. Product Detail (PDF, 1.8MB)
[/snip]
I agree. The PDF's are supplied by the manufacturers and I have asked
for smaller books and HTML versions, but they haven't come forward. I
will add the size warnings.
[snip]
4. There are no units beside the prices. Could put Euro or $ or
whatever here for the avoidance of doubt.
[/snip]
Good catch, I missed this entirely.
[snip]
5. Why the mini-logo in the top right corner? I think this looks very
odd. It is too similar to the Wifi icon on a laptop. It doesn't
sufficiently resemble the logotype to reinforce brand identity, imho. It
just makes the user stop and wonder what it is for a moment. Best gone.
STOP PRESS - It's worse than I thought. That's the button for the search
form? It really needs to say "GO" or similar active verb. I would never
have realised in a million years that I had to click that to make the
form work.
[/snip]
Thanks for the ammo here. The graphic guy and I have gone back and forth
on this. You are the second one to bring it up and that should give me
enough ammo to make the change. The favicon is this little logo already,
to me it looks like you should click on 'Search'.
[snip]
6. This part also makes the design look bad because neither the minilogo
nor the edge of the search box line up with the right hand margin. Looks
well untidy.
[/snip]
We had some debate here concerning this among the savvy and non-savvy.
Since the rest of the page appears to lie on top of the background the
top menu and copyright statement create (not my words) "an interesting
visual tension". The consensus was to leave it be for now.
[snip]
7. The animated logo fing should stop after three iterations. If not
much sooner.
[/snip]
CEO decision....this one I cannot control. :) If it were me I would have
never animated this at all and I would have had the top signal bar hang
outside of the block. All of the print media has the bar chopped off at
the edge of a full-bleed page.
Thanks for the feedback, very helpful and useful stuff.